In a news release sent earlier today, Catholic League president William Donohue said the league “will now consider filing an amicus brief” in the Colorado voucher case. Donohue has now confirmed that the league will go forward:
“Gerard Bradley, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, has agreed to write an amicus brief on behalf of the Catholic League defending the constitutionality of a recently passed Colorado law on school vouchers. The law provides a voucher to poor students who attend ‘unsatisfactory’ public schools; the voucher allows them the option of attending a private or parochial school. Seeking to deny the poor the same rights afforded by the rich is a coalition of civil rights organizations and teachers’ unions. They are drawing on the state’s Blaine amendment, an antiquated law that was born of anti-Catholic bigotry.
“Gerry Bradley chairs the Catholic League’s legal advisory committee and is one of the best constitutional minds in the nation. He is relishing the idea of challenging those who seek to deny non-whites today their civil rights by relying on a law that was originally used to deny Catholics their civil rights. That those who are doing so are the so-called champions of civil rights is the ultimate irony. It is also their disgrace.”
